Happy Birthday! Fstoppers Turns 2 Years Old

Welp we have done it again; we've made it another year! According to CDC.org, we should be on our way to making sentences with 2-4 words, playing simple make-believe games, pointing out cats, dogs, and birds, and of course climbing up and down furniture without anyone's help. In all seriousness, Lee and I (along with everyone else on the Fstoppers staff) are incredibly grateful to still be sharing to this community we created back in March of 2010.

We have a lot of exciting and interesting things coming up in the near future, and we will continue to bring you the best BTS, photos, news, gear, and Fstoppers Originals we possibly can in the next year. Thanks for reading, commenting, emailing, tweeting, and sharing. We have the best readers in the world and we are so thankful to have each and every one of you hanging out here and on the Fstoppers Facebook Page. As we continue to launch the new site design (preview it here), I thought it would be fun to revisit some of the older editions of Fstoppers from the past...crazy to how much we've grown in so little time.

For the few people who knew about Fstoppers, this is what they first saw back in Q1 of 2010:

The first design was extremely bare bones with no design element at all. I hope no one remembers this one!

The next site design was a humble attempt by two photographers who weren't very good graphic designers. This was back when we thought we could do everything ourselves :)

Fstoppers recieved its first major facelift thanks to the guys at Novum Studios

I wish Fstoppers would go back a year ago!The post quality is getting lower. At the beginning posts were objective and focused on really interesting things.
Now you're just trying to promote your sponsors.Sorry guys but I think the time for me has come to move on...

back a year ago all we did was post one behind the scenes video a day...now we still do that and also post news, interesting creative artists, contests, and reviews. If you liked what we did a year ago we are still doing that but offering other content our readers have been emailing us or asking us to do. Let us know what you would like to see more of and we will work hard to give our readers more of that content.

what you were doing a year ago is what made Fstoppers unique.
Now it's becoming no more than just another website talking about photography.I know a lot of people who used to look at Fstoppers every single day, and a lot of them just gave up.
Maybe categorizing the posts in a better way and keeping only the BTS as may articles would avoid all that pollution, and could help going back to what we loved in Fstoppers, behind the scene videos

You guys do such a tremendous job and contribution to all of us. I enjoy your site as my daily form of inspiration not only for my photography, but also a great positive way to start each day. I wish you much more success. I'm glad I found your site in those early posts. And after meeting you in person, made me a bigger fan of your work. Congratulations Patrick and Lee!. And Happy 2nd Year to the entire FStoppers Team!.
Fernando Garcia - NYC

Wow, I actually like the first website design the best. "No design element at all"? Really? Ever heard of whitespace? The first design was comfortable. Sure, it could have used a better typeface and some more texture or depth, but at least it wasn't cluttered with ads in every nook and cranny.
This latest redesign is a big step backwards, mainly because the post title gets hidden away next to a big fat ad. Not the best improvements.